In case of fire the protection of human life and the prevention of irreparable damage
have become a mandatory requirement and an important research topic. In strategic
structures such as hospitals, civil defence and military buildings, it is important to
limit deformations in order to guarantee the building serviceability also in the case
of fire.
The aim of the work, described in this paper, is to estimate the deformations of some
structural elements (beams and columns) subjected to fire and to extend the results
to more complex structures. By means of the SAFIR code a nonlinear structural
analysis has been performed for simple reinforced concrete elements subject to
standard fire conditions. Hence, “effective temperatures” have been determined
imposing the equality of deformations obtained by linear calculation and the ones
obtained by SAFIR. Deflections and elongations obtained by “effective
temperatures” approach have been compared to the ones obtained by the nonlinear
SAFIR analysis. The results show an acceptable error percentage taking into account
the coarse approximations involved in the procedure.
The “effective temperatures” method allows early assessment of the serviceability
limit state of complex structures partially subjected to fire.

In case of fire the protection of human life and the prevention of irreparable damage
have become a mandatory requirement and an important research topic. In strategic
structures such as hospitals, civil defence and military buildings, it is important to
limit deformations in order to guarantee the building serviceability also in the case
of fire.
The aim of the work, described in this paper, is to estimate the deformations of some
structural elements (beams and columns) subjected to fire and to extend the results
to more complex structures. By means of the SAFIR code a nonlinear structural
analysis has been performed for simple reinforced concrete elements subject to
standard fire conditions. Hence, “effective temperatures” have been determined
imposing the equality of deformations obtained by linear calculation and the ones
obtained by SAFIR. Deflections and elongations obtained by “effective
temperatures” approach have been compared to the ones obtained by the nonlinear
SAFIR analysis. The results show an acceptable error percentage taking into account
the coarse approximations involved in the procedure.
The “effective temperatures” method allows early assessment of the serviceability
limit state of complex structures partially subjected to fire.